YOUR VIEW: Library hours set by usage, not whim

Thursday

Oct 30, 2008 at 12:01 AM

The Lakeville Public Library staff and trustees are grateful for the publicity provided by local newspapers, especially The Standard-Times. The Standard-Times often helps us to reach the public with news about our programs and events. We were, however, disappointed to read your Oct. 21 editorial about libraries, stating that library "hours, it seems, revolve around the convenience of the staff instead of the public. Evenings and Saturdays are the first to go," and using the Lakeville library as an example.

NANCY LAFAVE

The Lakeville Public Library staff and trustees are grateful for the publicity provided by local newspapers, especially The Standard-Times. The Standard-Times often helps us to reach the public with news about our programs and events. We were, however, disappointed to read your Oct. 21 editorial about libraries, stating that library "hours, it seems, revolve around the convenience of the staff instead of the public. Evenings and Saturdays are the first to go," and using the Lakeville library as an example.

Our library, and the other accredited libraries of Southeastern Massachusetts, are part of a large and professional network of libraries and library staff. Olivia Melo, director of the Lakeville library, states, "No administrator ever decides to close the library based on staff hours ... the pattern of usage is carefully studied and then a determination is made based on the most cost-effective time to close/open. "¦ This was done via survey in the past, and we will very soon work on changing our hours based on automated reports (flow of traffic on some afternoons vs. weekend hours) to determine which will be the best way to apply our level-funded budget. As an aside, staff do not get paid if they don't work (on) Saturdays."

Allow me to repeat, please: Our hours are based on surveys of public preference and actual public usage. And our staff members, as dependent upon their paychecks as the rest of us, are happy to work on Saturdays.

In the three years since Lakeville's new library has opened, the director and trustees have often discussed opening on summer Saturdays as we see an increase in the needs of our patrons, and to do so is one of our dearest wishes. Returns of our most recent survey have indeed indicated significant public interest in additional summer Saturday hours. Unfortunately, adding more hours by being open on Saturdays is something that we cannot do at this time due to the financial crunch that Lakeville, along with most SouthCoast towns, is experiencing.

Surveys have indicated that, given a choice between evening and Saturday hours, patrons prefer to keep our current evening hours. We are already spread thin; our library, at 16,000 square feet (with, happily, all of the additional patron usage and programming that we could have hoped for), continues to operate with virtually the same level of staffing as we had for our 3,000-square-foot original library.

As an institution that prides itself on providing accurate reference information to our patrons, we wish that the writer of your Oct. 21 editorial had taken the time to ask why we aren't open on summer Saturdays, instead of assuming that such a decision would ever be based simply on the whims of a staff who, in your opinion, simply cannot be bothered to care about the needs of the public. "Make library hours fair to everyone" sent, in our view, an unfairly negative message about libraries and their dedicated staff.